Centrism is okay during good times, when managing the country is all it takes and the political climate isn’t poisoned. During times of crisis, however, it’s horribly ineffective, because centrists are usually quite averse to any large-scale reforms and their ineffectiveness will only benefit (usually right-wing) radical parties.
In an ideal world, you have conservatives and revolutionaries. The revolutionaries want to make changes to try and make things even better. The conservatives act to maintain the status quo. When they balance properly then you get steady change, but slow enough to detect and fix cascading problems/failures.
In this situation, the centralists act as the balance point, being swayed one way or the other to set the path.
Unfortunately the only place this is actually close to accurate is Sci-Fi novels.
Centrism is okay during good times, when managing the country is all it takes and the political climate isn’t poisoned. During times of crisis, however, it’s horribly ineffective, because centrists are usually quite averse to any large-scale reforms and their ineffectiveness will only benefit (usually right-wing) radical parties.
Good times for whom?
In an ideal world, you have conservatives and revolutionaries. The revolutionaries want to make changes to try and make things even better. The conservatives act to maintain the status quo. When they balance properly then you get steady change, but slow enough to detect and fix cascading problems/failures.
In this situation, the centralists act as the balance point, being swayed one way or the other to set the path.
Unfortunately the only place this is actually close to accurate is Sci-Fi novels.
In another word : they’re useful idiot